Judgment

by Sean Platt

  The sense didn’t reach Piper in words. It came as a gatling blast of emotions.

  Yes.

  No.

  Up.

  Down.

  Told you so. Told you this was a bad idea.

  Told you so. Told you this was a good idea.

  But the warring and yet somehow integrated contention coming from the Meyers changed nothing. They were still pinned down. Still trapped.

  Piper turned to Lila. Clara was beside her. In the past, Lila would have been tightly holding her child, but those days were long behind them. Now Lila was upright, concerned but not panicked, seeming eighty instead of still in her twenties. Piper imagined they must all seem that old, and thought as much whenever she looked in a mirror.

  And Clara, beside but not entangled with her mother, seemed unfazed as ever. Calm, unaffected, almost jaded, just like the other Lightborn child they’d run across. Once an anomaly, Clara’s strange prescience and adult demeanor now seemed almost normal. Odd to believe there had once been a world where Clara appeared precocious. A world where seven-year-old girls still played with dolls and didn’t hint at hidden eternal knowledge.

  “Why did they stop attacking?” Lila asked.

  Clara shrugged. She got her flashes, but the girl didn’t know everything. Heaven’s Veil had changed her. Maybe destroyed the source of her power’s sharpest edge. And encountering the Ark at Mount Horeb, Mount Sinai? That had changed them all.

  “I don’t know,” Piper answered when Clara didn’t.

  “They came in like gangbusters,” Lila said. “I figured we were toast.”

  Yes. Piper had thought that, too. Even Charlie had yelped like a frightened dog when the Reptars swarmed down from above. Most of ancient Cappadocia was supposed to have been abandoned in favor of the cities, at least as far as they’d heard across the outlands. The buried Turkish stronghold of Derinkuyu had dawned on Cameron like a benevolent bolt of lightning. If nobody had claimed it, the place would be the perfect place resting spot or semi-permanent residence. Or if a community had formed in Derinkuyu, as many rumors claimed, that would be even better. But they hadn’t found a community of human border dwellers or a hive claimed by Astrals. They’d found an empty shell. Until they’d made their way to the bottom and invaders descended.

  There was movement from across the chamber. Light was scant, especially with half their lanterns and lights muted during their flight from the Astrals, so what came looked like a shadow. But it was only Charlie.

  “Christopher ran up.”

  Piper waited for more. But Charlie had said the unhelpful thing and was now waiting for her response, oblivious to the fact that those three simple words had offered nothing meaningful. Even years spent touring the Astral capitals and smaller outposts (some as bad as Heaven’s Veil, most worse, and much of the badlands between uncrossable) hadn’t softened Charlie.

  “Up where?”

  “To the stone door.”

  “He didn’t … ”

  Charlie’s eyes, in the semi-dark, speared Lila like a sword. She stopped speaking as if chastised.

  “Of course not. The door weighs eleven hundred pounds even if it weren’t cemented in place. I wasn’t going to help him close it, and neither were the Meyers.”

  Lila said nothing as if he’d misunderstood. But Piper could feel her emotion, same as always, and yes, that had been her concern. Christopher wanted to close the door to keep the Astrals out. It’s how Derinkuyu had been designed, he claimed, but all Lila could think of was suffocation, of the door jamming and trapping them down here forever.

  “He’s back,” Charlie said.

  Piper waited a beat for more then said, “And?”

  “He says they’re just sitting there.”

  “Who?” Lila asked.

  “The Astrals. Reptars and Titans. At the choke point. They’re not trying to force their way in.”

  “They must think we’re heavily armed.”

  “Because that’s stopped them in the past. Like the time in Roman Sands, when we still had Terrence’s big gun. They still came even when the gate choked with Reptar bodies.”

  “Well then, why the hell do you think they aren’t coming at us, Charlie?” Lila demanded.

  Charlie’s face froze. His bangs were uneven. He didn’t even use a mirror to cut his hair. It just came off then piled up into a sharp-edged bowl until he looked pre-Astral Amish.

  Piper willed Lila to say nothing. Thankfully, she didn’t. The group had seen more than their share of arguments. There was Meyer against Kindred, Charlie against Cameron, Jeanine against everyone, and the unlikely spats where the sides were the group versus Charlie and Kindred. Charlie didn’t want to be on Kindred’s side any more than the man who was once Heaven’s Veil’s viceroy wanted to be on the side of Benjamin’s stodgy and unkempt right-hand man — who, he hadn’t forgotten, had urged many attacks on Heaven’s Veil before its annihilation. But Charlie and Kindred were alone with their desire to go back after the Ark. Back after the archive. Back, as things had settled, to the fearful city of Ember Flats, to face what they’d fled years ago.

  The air seemed to thicken as if a fog were rolling in. At first, Lila thought the lights were dying. Her second thought was that the Astrals had turned from their usual brute force and decided to attack like old-fashioned human riot police: rolling tear gas canisters into the lower levels where they’d once thought they could make their home underground, attempting to smoke them out.

  But then the building mist coalesced into a dense, multicolored, shifting cloud of smoke. Then the smoke pressed itself together, and Piper found herself staring into the face of Original Meyer’s late ex-wife, Heather Hawthorne.

  Heather smirked but said nothing as she crossed to the doorway, toward the hallway whose end was thick with Astral soldiers that, if Christopher was to be believed, were merely waiting.

  The Pall, as Heather, raised a finger and hooked it into a come-here gesture.

  “I hate it when it does that,” Lila said.

  CHAPTER 3

  Jeanine was stopped at a fork in the passageway, half-stooped under the low ceiling. Cameron came up beside her. As she shone her flashlight ahead, toward the rounded hallways, the spherical room portals, and the holes and grooves in the floor and walls, he got the curious sensation of exploring the interior nooks of a natural sponge.

  “It went that way.” Cameron pointed to the left.

  “I know where it went.”

  Jeanine’s answer was so flat and inflectionless that Cameron gave her a moment. She was clearly processing something. Either that or being defiant for the hell of it — something Nathan Andreus had encouraged in his lieutenant even if it meant she heeded a troublesome mind of her own.

  “We followed it this far,” Cameron said.

  “I don’t take orders from the Pall.”

  Cameron looked at Jeanine’s face, glaring at the twin passages as if deciding which to take, her jaw subtly working. If her hands hadn’t been occupied, Cameron knew she’d be chewing at her short, tortured fingernails. It was how she showed nerves even though the group’s fearless commando officially had none. For a second, he saw her as the woman she must have been before the Astrals arrival. She was thirty at most, and pretty beneath all the grit and strife that coated her in equal measure. She wore her need for vengeance — for Nathan, for their other friends, for all the massacred innocents in the Heaven’s Veil apocalypse — like armor. Without it, Cameron suspected, Jeanine Coffey might be beautiful. Or with it, maybe more so.

  “We followed it, Jeanine. You agreed.”

  “I don’t trust it.”

  “It’s been with us for five years.”

  “The Astrals don’t count time like we do. It could be a long con.”

  But her words were bullshit. Jeanine didn’t believe this was a double-cross, here and now and out of the blue. The Pall had come from the Astral mind, like Kindred had come from the Astral body. But Kindred was one of them now, an
d so was this silent, dark, and mysterious thing — this purged remainder from the mind from the first dead Meyer clone, if Kindred was to be believed. Or, if Cameron listened to his instincts, raw humanity in its natural form. This was what they all looked like once forced through the Astral filter, deemed unworthy of inclusion in their mind and forced to escape as something new.

  Jeanine was just scared of the unknown and of the way things had changed. Ever since they’d seen what they had through the Ark’s eye, their world had been different. It was no longer precisely humans versus aliens. The Astrals followed, yes. And sure, they killed. But despite Jeanine’s claim, Cameron increasingly felt more watched than stalked. More examined than hunted.

  Before Cameron could say more, Jeanine turned to him. He saw fear in her eyes, knowing she must see the same in his. Not because they were in danger — they’d been in mortal danger for nearly a decade now. Eventually fear of death became the norm, and you stopped dreading it. This was something else.

  “It’s never helped us, Cameron.”

  “It helped us in Heaven’s Veil.”

  “It got us out. That’s different.”

  Cameron wanted to argue (How is “getting us out” not helping us?), but he knew exactly what she meant. And this was hardly the time to discuss it. Unless this — with the Pall beckoning them into danger with its silent understanding — was exactly when it mattered most.

  “Who was that man, Cameron? The human I saw? How could it be Mullah if there was only one of them?”

  From the left-side passage, a black-headed Reptar emerged. Slowly, and in no rush. Cameron and Jeanine ducked behind a rock wall, but it wasn’t looking in their direction. If it had been a human, Cameron could almost have believed it had left the rest of its group to smoke a cigarette and pass the time.

  And now here came the smoke as if plucked from Cameron’s imagination.

  Swirling slowly around them.

  Raising Jeanine’s gun arm, commanding the movement of her hand.

  Jeanine looked over at Cameron, eyes wide.

  The gun leveled at the Reptar.

  And then the Pall squeezed Jeanine’s hand in its smoky fist, pulling the trigger, shooting the Reptar in the side of its panther-like head.

  “I … I didn’t mean to … ”

  Jeanine didn’t need to finish. Every Astral in the choke point was spilling toward them like hornets disturbed.

  “Run!” Cameron shouted, bolting up from his crouch.

  So they ran.

  CHAPTER 4

  Piper heard the gunshot. For a second she was back with Meyer before this had all started, in Vail when it had still been Vail, firing the slug that had ended Garth’s life outside the Axis Mundi. Then she was in the cave at Mount Horeb, which Charlie said was the same as Mount Sinai, where Moses had received the Ten Commandments from God and the smashed pieces of those original judgments had once been entombed in the Ark. Where, Cameron seemed to believe, the Astral Archive birthed its most famous legend.

  But then the instinctual, gut-deep memories were gone, and Piper was back in the caves with Lila and Charlie and Clara behind her, with Christopher and the Brothers Dempsey spilling from the opposite chamber.

  “Was that a gun?” Christopher asked, staring at Piper.

  She didn’t answer. Piper was in the stone hallway where the Pall had beckoned her. She wasn’t the logical leader of this party with Cameron gone but was at the group’s head, all of them unsure whether to proceed or duck back into their holes.

  Ahead, Piper saw Astrals. Lots of Astrals. Spilling away from the choke point by the huge round stone door like water down a drain. Apparently keeping Piper’s group trapped was no longer interesting. Only whatever had fired the gun seemed to matter now.

  “Psst!”

  Piper’s head turned. She saw a very thin, very tall man with a wispy brown mustache beyond the choke point, hiding behind a rock wall as the Astral outflow began to dissipate.

  The man looked directly at Piper and waved her forward. As Reptars and Titans poured from the funnel, Piper realized she could follow. But should she? Was it the Pall again? It had vanished just before the gunshot, dissolving into a thin, nearly invisible mist so it could sneak back past the Astral blockade.

  But no, she didn’t think the Pall had ever sampled a thin man with a mustache. And besides, this man was making sounds, whereas the Pall was only gestures — and (when it took the effort required to maintain a shape) facial expressions.

  “Psst! This way!”

  Kindred put a hand on Piper’s shoulder. Meyer, in parallel, put a hand on her other shoulder. Piper felt like a tome between matching bookends. Meyer had grown a beard and Kindred was clean shaven, but if not for the facial hair, it would have been impossible to tell them apart.

  “Don’t,” Kindred said.

  And Meyer, in Piper’s other ear, said, “For once, we’re in agreement.”

  But Piper was thinking of the Pall. It had taken form in her stone room a few minutes ago, not Meyer and Kindred’s. Both Meyers seemed to have a trusting yet suspicious relationship with the Pall, not all that different from the oddly fraternal relationship they had with each other. On one hand, Kindred and Meyer had been the strongest voices for its inclusion in the group, back when they could have abandoned it at the Utah ranch. But on the other hand, it had changed since then, like everyone else. Now Piper seemed to sense it most. Piper who, despite the Pall’s maddeningly neutral behavior, still believed it was around for a reason.

  Whoever this man was, the Pall had known he was was out here. And it had wanted the group to find him.

  “Piper!” Meyer hissed.

  She slipped her shoulders from both of their warning hands. Lila was behind her, Clara at her back. The women were leading while the men stayed in the rear. They were being either bold or foolish; she’d find out which in no time.

  “This way,” the man repeated as Piper approached, moving toward the passage opposite the one taken by Astrals. There was a startled gasp from her back, and Lila skittered sideways, away from the body of a fallen Reptar.

  The man vanished down the passage. After a moment’s hesitation, Piper raised her flashlight and followed.

  She almost lost their guide several times in the next sixty seconds, but he kept stopping, giving her time to follow his glow. The group was sticking close, mumbling but saying nothing, apparently having decided that anything that drew an Astral platoon away had earned benefit of the doubt. They’d been trapped; now they weren’t. Maybe this strange man was trouble, but he was leading them into a lateral move at best.

  “We’ll wait a moment.” His words were oddly formal, and Piper realized for the first time that he seemed to have a British accent.

  “Why?”

  He waved them back against the wall, stowing his light. Two Reptars passed.

  “That’s why.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Aubrey Davis.”

  Piper waited, but apparently he was finished.

  “Why did you come for us?”

  “It seemed likely that you’d steered into some trouble.”

  “But how … ?” She didn’t even know what to ask. What? Where? When? And why? But she settled for the topmost question in her mind: “Who told you we were down there? How did you even—”

  “My employer and I sometimes use these caves for storage. We considered using the place as sanctuary but discovered its unfortunate shortfall as you seem to have.”

  “Which is … ?”

  “That there’s only one entrance.”

  “We thought a single entrance would make it easier to defend.”

  “Yes. Well. How would you say that has worked out?”

  Aubrey was looking into the hallway, still pinned around the corner. It seemed empty to Piper, but he appeared to be waiting for something.

  “We heard there was a colony here. A community of humans.” That was sort of a lie. In truth, Cameron had remembered t
he place and its honeycombed grandeur and thought its location would be a perfect place to establish residence, and for once to be able to flee the endless sun and exposure. Sure, they’d heard rumors of communities, and if others knew of Derinkuyu, it’d make a perfect spot. Especially since the Astrals were far less intent on hunting humans lately. At least everyone but the Dempsey/Bannister clan.

  “We saw you go in,” Aubrey told her in his crisp accent, still looking around the corner. “Unfortunately the Astrals watch this quarter as well. Often they let humans come and go, but they went right after you. Any idea why?”

  Yes, sure, Piper thought. We’re carrying a key that we thought would deactivate an alien doomsday advice. But of course, once we realized it was an archive rather than a weapon, the Astrals were no less interested in pursuit. From Little Cottonwood Canyon to Heaven’s Veil to Mount Sinai to cities under Turkey, we’ve stayed interesting as long as we’re still holding the ball.

  But on the heels of that thought were a dozen others the group had endlessly debated.

  So why not leave the key behind and let them have it?

  Why not smash the key so that no one could use it?

  And since the Astrals seemed truly unable to open the archive without the key even after they’d followed the Heaven’s Veil scream to find it, would it really be that big of a deal to to just let them have it — and unarchive what they seemed to want?

  Charlie arguing one way.

  Cameron arguing another.

  And, still present even after his death, Benjamin Bannister’s ghost seemed to argue yet a different path.

  “No,” Piper lied. “But our group … we got separated from—”

  But now there was sound from behind them again. The Astrals had circled around, and Piper could hear them spilling upward, still in pursuit of their alien plate — the key to unlocking God knew what evidence in advance of humanity’s trial.

  “Brilliant,” Aubrey muttered, looking back. “I do love an exciting finish.”